Perhaps the COVID pandemic did not itself create unprecedented inventions and new things, but unexpected things that were already there suddenly came to the fore. Like podcasts, like online art, like new views on leadership and a different way of looking at the future. Very briefly, this is what you take away from the total of eight hours of online seminars 'Digital Decisiveness', which were broadcast from Pakhuis de Zwijger in May and June this year, and were seen by too few people.
In the days when everything went online and we only interacted via video, we quickly suffered from overkill. What would have been considered futuristic nonsense 10 years ago was our new reality in 2020 and 2021.
We ran out of ideas too soon. However, the sessions from Pakhuis de Zwijger, co-organised by DEN, national knowledge institute for culture & digital transformation and the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) and supported by the City of Amsterdam, gained momentum and eloquence during those eight broadcasts. Reason enough to watch them again.
Podcast
What was somewhat searching in the first four episodes came together gloriously in the second half of the series. In episode 5, for instance, actress and voice producer Nele Eeckhout immediately sets the tone by talking in glowing Flemish about Audio collective Schik, which she set up with some fellow students at the Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp. Slow art, productions of many episodes, but completely focused on the immersive experience. Those who go to their podcast about Laura H has listened, can talk about it.
'We ask quite a lot from a listener, sometimes six 40-minute episodes demanding attention in a digital world where everything goes fast. We want to counter that.
Making quality takes time, but our promise is that it's worth that time.' It works, even better than video.
Actor in your own city
One of the things that took flight during the pandemic, for example, were audio walks, and SCHIK has become very good at that: 'Audio puts a filter over reality, you walk through the city like a movie character.' This made the link to augmented reality, another development that could grow bigger at a time when touching strange things or entering buildings was difficult.
Pepijn Borgwat from Synergique talks about how she set up an exhibition at the Amsterdam Municipal Archives about Rembrandt van Rijn thanks to AR to the next level. For example, by giving children different information from adults on specially adapted iPads, so they had something to talk about afterwards.
Just
Because shortly before that, you can also see an extraordinarily enthusiastic speech by Zaid el Ouardani about the world of short TikTok videos, Nele Eeckhout wonders in despair whether everything then has to become an experience. That's not so bad, says Pepijn Borgwat; 'You can put something like this in one room, and just have your exhibition in the rooms around it.'
After a fascinating episode in which Yvonne Franquinet of the AFK gives some wonderful examples of - already somewhat older - online art by Dries Verhoeven, and also makes it clear that we should not exaggerate our trust in Big Tech, episode six is about leadership. And there are instructive things said there.
Bingo
Every leadership lecture - I've had one and a half years of MBA-light - starts with diagrams. Circles, quadrants, stakeholders, flow charts and a lot of words that could go straight into Japke D. Bouma's bingo. If you want to know more about this, please visit the DEN site for more information on the Focus model and The Focus Model digital tool for digital transformation and leadership.
Usually the conversation gets really interesting after that input and that happens in episode seven. Tom de Smet, director Sound and Vision The Hague and Chantal Keijsper of The Utrecht Archive address how to combine digital innovation with digital leadership. It quickly becomes clear that those things are too often managed to a single person, a single department and then preferably within a completed project.
That means loss, says Tom de Smet: 'A digital Leader has to be more invisible than a traditional director. It's about turning culture around, and then you can also only leave when everything is done. Otherwise everything collapses behind you. Very often digitalisation projects are set up as projects, and then when the project is done, you have to start all over again.'
In the end, we all have to move into the future, with all this digitisation, heightened realities and digital art. It was precisely during the time of the pandemic that the future became topical again. For some as the site of the dreaded 'Great Reset', for others a preparation for a 'new normal' whose contours are not at all clear yet.
Fodder for futurologists as 'future explorer' Freija van Duijne. In episode 8, she looks ahead in the Digital Decisiveness project and reveals that artists in particular are essential in - literally - imagining the future.
Threats
Van Duijne emphasises that a wide, open view is essential: 'Not looking outward from yourself, but watching how the world around you changes and then seeing the impact on yourself. You look for people who can think associatively, so watch films, read books. You have to bring in the conservative types later, but the vision comes first. Future exploration is listening and feeling what is going on. Furthermore, fear plays a big role, of automation, of diversity, of redundancy.'
And there is only one remedy for that, she argues: 'If you reason from the now, threats come to the fore, but if you think from the future, you can dream.' So: 'Smash the crystal ball. Empathise with future generations.’
First episode
The big question of online gathering: who will show us the way to the bar? #Digitaladventure 1
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